The water is low and warm up in the Smokies and the fish can be picky, but that doesn’t mean you can’t catch them. We just don’t hit them very hard in these conditions and stress them out more than we have to. So that led us to float the Clinch this past saturday with Joe. The water in the Clinch is very clear and the fish were extremely spooky, so after we changed up our routine and flies we started landing fish. Long cast and light tippet will get fish to eat and midges are always a safe bet. Here is a solid fish that Joe landed after lunch.

Black caddis were everywhere on the surface in about a size 20 and fish were coming up to feed. All of our fish were caught on nymphs. When the water came up we switched to bigger patterns and that seemed to work pretty well. All in all we boated quite a few fish throughout the day and if you figure out how they want the fly that day it can be a lot of fun. It was an awesome day and I got to spend it with a really cool guy, congrats Joe on your fish.